If the flamer cost 10 res, could kill the hive at almost LOS range in less than 20 seconds and depower all alien upgrades. Yes, I'd agree. Although in that case, I believe that's an issue with the Infestation node system and the bugged alien warning system than all the problems being on the flamethrower side.
While the flamethrower costs far more than a gorge, it can annihilate a hive very quickly with the ammo you carry around with you. It also doesn't need to 'depower' anything, because it kills the only structure that matters in the vicinity. It's the power node and the command chair. (A heavy investment in crags and whips deter this, of course, as would an investment in a shotgun/grenade launcher for the commander on the Marines team.)
Oh, and it can be stacked with other upgrades like a jetpack. Not that you'd need the jetpack in the scenario where there are no defenders to stop you. (And of course it raises the cost of a flamethrower by ten, making it more on par with a Lerk than a gorge in cost. Of course, the jetpack itself is the same cost as a gorge. Suicide jetpack Marines on a hive, anyone? Anyone?)
Actually, with that in mind, what about flamethrower troops that simply run about flaming cysts without resistance? I mean, in the 'Gorge Bile Bomb' scenario every one of you has put forward there is minimal or zero resistance at the main base that's being attacked. A single gorge isn't going to drop an entire Marines base 'in seconds', and if it's a group of Gorges it's an all out assault at an undefended location. It's an all-or-nothing move by the Aliens, and is very likely to cost the Aliens a hive while costing the Marines a base. It's just poor strategy all around for both teams, although the Aliens come out on top of the trade due to their lack of structure investment.
If it's as ubiquitous of a problem as people make it out to be, why don't the Marines plan around that being something that will happen rather than something that won't happen? I mean, come on, the Marines commander puts stuff in places that make Bile Bomb super easy even for a new player. There is no incentive to cluster buildings on the Marines team, yet without fail everything is within Bile range of each other even in rooms with plenty of room. Why?!
If the flamer cost 10 res, could kill the hive at almost LOS range in less than 20 seconds and depower all alien upgrades. Yes, I'd agree. Although in that case, I believe that's an issue with the Infestation node system and the bugged alien warning system than all the problems being on the flamethrower side.
While the flamethrower costs far more than a gorge, it can annihilate a hive very quickly with the ammo you carry around with you. It also doesn't need to 'depower' anything, because it kills the only structure that matters in the vicinity. It's the power node and the command chair. (A heavy investment in crags and whips deter this, of course, as would an investment in a shotgun/grenade launcher for the commander on the Marines team.)
Oh, and it can be stacked with other upgrades like a jetpack. Not that you'd need the jetpack in the scenario where there are no defenders to stop you. (And of course it raises the cost of a flamethrower by ten, making it more on par with a Lerk than a gorge in cost. Of course, the jetpack itself is the same cost as a gorge. Suicide jetpack Marines on a hive, anyone? Anyone?)
Actually, with that in mind, what about flamethrower troops that simply run about flaming cysts without resistance? I mean, in the 'Gorge Bile Bomb' scenario every one of you has put forward there is minimal or zero resistance at the main base that's being attacked. A single gorge isn't going to drop an entire Marines base 'in seconds', and if it's a group of Gorges it's an all out assault at an undefended location. It's an all-or-nothing move by the Aliens, and is very likely to cost the Aliens a hive while costing the Marines a base. It's just poor strategy all around for both teams, although the Aliens come out on top of the trade due to their lack of structure investment.
If it's as ubiquitous of a problem as people make it out to be, why don't the Marines plan around that being something that will happen rather than something that won't happen? I mean, come on, the Marines commander puts stuff in places that make Bile Bomb super easy even for a new player. There is no incentive to cluster buildings on the Marines team, yet without fail everything is within Bile range of each other even in rooms with plenty of room. Why?!
The difference is no one is killing hives with flamethrowers once every 3 games by themselves. I dunno, maybe it's because all the marines are idiots and haven't realized just how quickly and easy it is to kill a hive with a flamethrower...
A jetpack/flamer is 35 res. You can't exactly suicide on a base with that amount of tech and res. Also, the marin base does drop "in seconds". 17 seconds. 18-21 seconds if a marine is able to kill the gorge but takes "seconds" too long to buy a welder and run to the power node. Also, in that scenario, there has to be a minimum of 2-3 marines in the depowered base to get it back online or else marines will most likely lose the base to reinforcing alien waves.
For your argument about clustering: structures have to be placed in certain areas or its even easier to bilebomb from far out of range in the hallways leading to marine base (also allowing gorges to run away easier). Hell, it's the reason why the kiosk in Docking had to be moved to prevent hallway bilebombs (or at least partially remove its efficiency).
More often than not if it's a group of gorges (or a gorge and a fade, or the beloved Onos and 1-2 gorge attack), that isn't an all or nothing attack. The gorges are a low investment lifeform and the Onos can retreat if a beacon is called. Now ARCs are an all or nothing investment because if the attack fails hard, its harder for them to run away and they're expensive.
Base trading you mentioned is... situational. Sometimes its better for marines (3 marine bases vs 2 alien hives). However, in an even fight, I agree, Marines normally lose more res.
And as you said, marines ARE planning around it. You don't think armories-as-walls or Factory-blocking-onos tactics were made in a vacuum. Normally, I take it upon myself to stay at base and play security guard while everyone else moves out. Hopefully, another marine will be near enough that if a 2 gorge or a gorge + fade/onos moves in, I can buy the comm enough time to beacon back. Maybe those Exos can kill a res-bought lifeform before they die on the field.
I gotta say though, it's fun sitting and watching the base sometimes. I feel like a gorge, watching the obs whir too a fro... looking at the map for blinking structures... jumping between bases... Its oddly calming. Sometimes I wonder what my alien-security-guard counterpart is doing... Maybe he's a gorge patrolling the hives and watching the hydras twitch and grow.
I still think the power node/Bile bomb relation could be handled better and should be looked at.
Yeah, or games where the Marines are rolling with Exos and about to win but power in main gets bilebombed because if the comm beacons all the Exos will die.
Or the game where the Marines had us on the ropes but then we mass bile bombed and won anyway.
A tech point, with structures, is usually worth more than a few Exo. Those Exo can retreat, take a defensive position, or continue their assault. There some games where Marines decide to sacrifice one tech point to take out two Alien Hives.
If the Marines had you "on the ropes" then it shouldn't have been so easy to counter attack. Having two Hives and having resources to set-up a counter attack likely means you weren't doing as bad as you thought. On the ropes would be 1 Hive, with maybe another one building, and 2 nodes.
Honestly I almost never see a commander nanoshield the power node. Like literally 1 in 10 games if that. I don't think many comms realize you can do that - for some reason it just hasn't reached public awareness yet even after all these months. Maybe it's because most comms don't even see them as a structure to interact with, since they're map props that drop automatically.
Yeah.... I've had plead with Comms to Nano-shield the Power Node, Phase Gate, etc. It's really helpful for defending Resource Nodes too; just ask the Comm to shield the node, so you have time to get there. Comms need to see how powerful it is.
It can be painful playing against a Comm that shields. It requires more effort (in both planning and force) to take anything out. Everything keeps get a shield.
if your not going to take my entire post seriously then dont pick out one part of it and respond to that.
now for the answer to your response
i didn't realize destroying eggs did simultaneous damage to the aliens entire base. i must be confused. does destroying eggs damage nearby units as well?
the entire alien base must die pretty quick then right?
now for your most likely response
"clearly grenade launchers dude splash damage"
oh really? grenade launchers due damage over time to all structures it hits? plus it also costs two seperate research technolgies at 40 res each to research + 25 player res to get? gorge unit (do you know how cheap the gorge cost even with bile bomb researched which applies to all gorges?) + with adrenaline it hits destroys structures a lot faster then a gl would (when really all it needs to destroy is the power but luckily the gorge can hit everything.
this is all from a cheap support unit by the way i want to make sure this is clear .compare an onos to a gorge and see the kind of damage each could due to a base its easily on par if not more.
i didn't realize aliens didn't have the ability to drop additional eggs from nearby shifts the base must die to quick for aliens to do anything (aliens altered version of beacon if you will)
"well dude that's what beacon is for"
do you know how much health the obs has? ive had two gorges bile bomb it and when i notice within a few seconds and hit beacon, what do you know the observatory dies before beacon finishes.
i dont know how many hours you've put into ns2, but i've put in a lot so i dont take something like gorge bile bomb being fine lightly. again. go do the test then see what im talking about.
now just cuz i have time i will respond to your "nano a building, you know the nano costs res and really adds maybe 5 more seconds of being bile bombed (if that). so assume this happens every minute or of the game, a nano + beacon thats 15 res i believe + it taking away every player on the map away from their position. and what happens then? nano has a cooldown. the gorge runs out and can bile something else and u cant nano it. even with unlimited nano, considering how expensive it is there is a reason most commanders dont use it it's extremely risky and high cost long term so you'd only do it if you have no other choice and might as well do it.
you really think people haven't thought of that this entire time? games now fear gorges with bile bomb as if they were onos. and as commander i fear them more then onos they can easily obliterate it from far away and run away when marines phase through, onos has to be up close and personal and is an easy target.the fades at least and lerks and skulks wont obliterate an entire base quickly since their limited to single structures AND at close range, unlike the great bile bomb from a less then 20 res gorge.
im not sure if you will respond this way but ive seen some people already so please do not use the response " just kill the gorge " i will lose brain cells. I can apply that logic to anything it's the same logic people used in left 4 dead 2 when people complained about the molotov slowing down the tank. they respond " well dont get lit on fire then". amazing logic! hey wanna know how not to die as an onos? dont go onos.,
"hey lerk keeps harassing base from far away off the map "
"dude its called defend and kill it "
gorge is bile bombing from 50 feet away damaging everything and bellyslides away to safety we cant catch up even with sprint or jetpack.
"its fat and easy to hit you should've killed it before it ran off"
by time we did it had destroyed bunch of structures and another gorge shows up.
"go attack their hive then why are you turtling in base."
If you've gotten to the point where you can be repeatedly rushed by an onos with two bilebombing gorges, then you've already lost.
Going to have to disagree with you there. For example I was commanding on Docking, we held locker room, departures and marine start (forget the name) and we were constantly harassed by 2-3 gorges grouping up and bilebombing our base. Impossible to defend unless you have 1 or 2 marines constantly in your base watching for it. Extremely frustrating and we definitely had the upper hand in the game.
Another annoying spot is directly above the command station in warehouse on Tram, people go gorge across the beams and just ruin your base, not a lot you can do to prevent it.
As others have suggested it definitely needs tweaking a bit somehow.
To stop 2-3 Gorges, you need 1-2 Marines? Sounds like a decent trade off. Those Gorges are focusing on one location, so you can afford to send less Marines to play guard duty. I'm not seeing the issue here. It should take 1-2 Marines to stop 2-3 Gorges.
Also, you say you had the upper hand. How did your team allow the Aliens to keep Cafe or Gen (separated by Locker Room) long enough to "constantly" harass Terminal? All you have to do is drop the Aliens to one Hive and kill the Gorges; no more Bile Bomb.
Solo marines never win the game for marines - at least not against alien teams that have the least bit of competence.
It's the same if you reverse the roles. Play with competent Marines.
In practice it's not the same, that much is clear. A hive being ninjaed down is incredibly rare compared to main base losing power. If the bar for "competent" is higher for marines than it is for aliens then we have a problem.
the problem really is that bilebomb doesn't require any skill to make it very deadly. it's a noob tube, except the marine version is gimped horribly in comparison.
I would like to see Gorges having to charge the Bile Bomb for a longer range throw. You can still push out Bile Bomb at the usual rate, but then it won't travel all that far and you have to get closer to the action. If you want to make a long ranged assault, you effectively have to pay for it with a reduced rate of fire.
I'd actually like that if you could charge it up to go even further/flatter than it can currently.
Perhaps a change could include making bile less heavy single target DOT- By this I mean making it spread out at range, doing less damage to individual structures and a low area of effect. At close range it can still deal heavy damage to a near target. Think shotgun spread, except AOE. I also think the sentry idea is interesting. It would make the sentry farms slightly harder to take out. It seems similar to whips knocking back grenades.
Fix power nodes not bile bomb. Power nodes always have been a bad idea. If you took them out you would probably see total marine wins go up well over 50%
Bile Bomb by one player with or without adrenaline isn't going to take an entire base on their own without the Marines seriously dropping the ball. You can make lots of excuses, such as 'I didn't notice in time' or 'I was busy with med packs', but all of those are excuses.
At the end of the day, another warning type by the AI is going to be annoying as hell. Two skulks gang banging the power node is going to work even better than two Gorges going bile happy, since the only thing that matters in that base is killing the power. Sure gorges destroy more stuff than just the node, but you don't need to kill that stuff. It is collateral damage. Arguably you could say it's a good idea to kill the Observatory first, but if you have two skulks you've got a damn good shot of killing the power before that beacon finishes. Especially if it's a commander that didn't notice two gorges with bile bomb.
As I said earlier, this post should be about power nodes not Bile Bomb. I'm glad to see I'm not the only person that see's that in this thread. That being said, with Marines getting nano armor I really do fail to see the problem with power nodes beyond the fact they are useless micro. Much like the aliens cyst system, it's a B.S. mini-game to distract you from the big picture. The problem is that if you ignore the mini-game you still lose.
Bile Bomb by one player with or without adrenaline isn't going to take an entire base on their own without the Marines seriously dropping the ball. You can make lots of excuses, such as 'I didn't notice in time' or 'I was busy with med packs', but all of those are excuses.
The thing that annoys me is the priority. To me, NS2 is all about handling priorities.
You look at what is going down. You consider your options. You weigh the pros and cons. And you make a choice based on a number of educated assumptions, and you hope that they turn out to be correct.
Single Onos in your base? Well if I nano the power node he should be slowed down enough, and I have these exos in trouble right now and they need the light support so I will delay the distress by a few seconds.
Skulk rush on spawn? Well my marines are moving out for nodes at the moment, maybe if just these two guys come back they can do enough damage to be able to respawn and finish off the rest.
Gorge in our base? HOLY SHIT I CANNOT HIT THAT DISTRESS BUTTON FAST ENOUGH I do not care what is going on anywhere else on the map it simply does not matter because if I waste even 1 second I may lose every single structure we have.
I see your point well enough Strofix, but your method of handling the gorge in your base is wrong from the getgo. You never asked yourself 'should I just get out of the chair and use this gun I have right here in my hands to put bullets into his face until he dies'. That is the question you should have asked yourself first.
If your Team is heavily invested in an exo push on the Aliens second hive, then I'd say you've got a pretty good shot of it being just a gorge with no skulk guardian. Even two Gorges I'd put even money on a Marine with even a simple shotgun. If you stay in the chair, and the power goes down, are you really any better off in your unpowered metal coffin?
You're not 'trapped' in your box, and I'm pretty sure your Exo push will be fine without your guiding hand for twenty seconds. If more than two members of their team are in your base, beacon like hell because that means they don't have enough defenders to pose a serious threat to your Exo's. If you still lost your Exo's, well you got out played. It happens to us all.
This isn't a hard science or anything, but saying Bile needs to be nerfed because you can't be bothered to get out of the chair is absurd. I'm not saying that to you personally Strofix, since I haven't seen you suggest as much yet. There are those that seem to be saying that, and a lot of the examples being bandied about aren't examples of ninja gorges they're examples of a strike force that faked out some Exo's into exposing themselves too much. You see a mistake, or force a mistake, and you use it.
Exploiting that opening is literally what NS2 is all about.
I do, however, agree with you that it's just too much to expect all that from a Marines commander. They are different, but Marines are undeniably the harder team to play both as a foot soldier and as the commander. It's the most glaring in the command though. I hate commanding Marines, because you will be blamed for everything. On Aliens, no one seems to care as long as they get their upgrades and you put out drifters.
NS2 is also a strategy game. In strategy games there are strategically important locations. Get map awareness. You can't let the entrance to your base wide open (without any intel or troops) and expect that aliens don't use this undefended entrance.
I know, a skulk can probably sneak through the front line in most cases. But this takes time. And the occasions where the base falls to a ninja gorge are mostly because the com didn't care, that one entrance to its base is completely undefended and without an early warning option like an obs.
Like SpaceJew wrote, 1 or 2 skulks can absolutely do the same. They even can engage defending marines. This is a problem of power nodes. Not of bile bomb. If you nerf bile bomb you just hurt the poor gorge and the only effective weapon he has. But your undefended bases will go down to skulks now.
For me, the power node isn't even remotely a problem. I love it when a ninja gorge goes right for the power node. Its the second toughest structure in the whole base, and chances are they won't even destroy it. And even if they do? A power node takes 14 seconds of constant direct hit bile bombs to go down, a nanoshielded one takes around 20. Chances are that if the power node goes down, the gorge goes down shortly after to a good majority of the marine team, who then proceed to weld up the power node in under 5 seconds. Zero damage done.
The real problem are the smart gorges that know they can't take the power node, so instead they focus fire things like observatories, armories, IPs, arms labs. The things that can realistically be destroyed. Even if you don't destroy them, a half competent gorge will get 80% of all structures in a marine base down to around 50% health. Then what? There are a few options.
A single marine dedicates the next 1-2 minutes welding everything up
2-3 marines dedicate the next 30 seconds to doing nothing but welding structures in marine spawn
The marine commander spend 20-30 resources getting enough macs to repair everything
The comm does nothing and the next time the gorge hits the base, everything goes
When dealing with structures other than the comm chair and power node, even the logout delay of 2-3 seconds is enough to cause complete devastation.
If you dont think that bile bomb gorges win more games than probably every single other tactic (other than skill imbalance) than you are most likely wrong. The only tactic that probably comes close is the random wait 30 seconds and baserush. Bilebomb does too much damage per attack (not necessarily to much DPS). Adrenaline increases the amount of bile bombs you can fire too much, and also a carapace gorge that is jumping is harder to kill than it should be (wierd animation?). Bilebomb should be effective as a structure killer but NOT as a singlehanded game ender. The difficulty of executing a bilebomb rush in no way compares to the difficulty of defending against one, especially one that is even half ass coordinated.
The gorge is probably the single most overpowered unit currently, and arguably the one people realize the least.
The marine commander spend 20-30 resources getting enough macs to repair everything
One MAC will actually work. It might take longer, but the Gorge is dead now right? 30 or 45 seconds is a pretty long time, and that former Gorge is now in his hive that has Marines in it right?
Just sayin'.
Bilebomb should be effective as a structure killer but NOT as a singlehanded game ender.
There was that one time a Gorge used his bile bomb and killed three guys in one shot. Then, the shot ricocheted into the command chair which blew up into a pillar of nuclear flame, killing all life on the map except the mighty Gorge.
The marine commander spend 20-30 resources getting enough macs to repair everything
One MAC will actually work. It might take longer, but the Gorge is dead now right? 30 or 45 seconds is a pretty long time, and that former Gorge is now in his hive that has Marines in it right?
Just sayin'.
I'll test this out as I don't know the exact numbers, but I would estimate that a single MAC would take about a minute to repair a command chair from 50% to 100%. An entire base would take like 5 minutes. That is unless the MACs welding ability is not proportional to its relative ability to build.
I can only agree. Sentries need a bigger role. There's nothing wrong with static defenses. As long as they can be surpassed by clever play. Base defences (and countering base defences) have been a pillar in RTS games since the days of Dune II. It improves gameplay. For instance, Sentries guarding a base is better than having Marine players standing around in spawn just in case a stray Gorge or two happens to show up once in a while. It's better because it makes for better gameplay, allowing people to play the game against each other out on the map. It's better because it requires more thinking, coordination and teamplay from the Alien players since they need to overwhelm the Sentries before landing those devastating Bile Bombs on the Marine structures.
As for turtling... Have it so that Sentries within the blast radius of Xenocide are knocked over and destroyed. Voila, game-prolonging Sentries nullified.
If you dont think that bile bomb gorges win more games than probably every single other tactic (other than skill imbalance) than you are most likely wrong.
I actually agree with you, that a good coordinated bile bomb attack is a game ender. But we are talking here about single gorges that do suicide rushs. And I only ever saw marine lose, when they made the mistake of bad scouting or slow reacting to this.
Yes, a good coordinated bile rush with a gorge and 1 or 2 aliens who cover him from marines is devastating. But this is good team play from the aliens and should be rewarded. I have no problem with this case. Because this is a valid attack with 3 players on a base. Marines can counter it by simply sending 3 or 4 marines and kill those gorge and its defenders.
For instance, Sentries guarding a base is better than having Marine players standing around in spawn just in case a stray Gorge or two happens to show up once in a while.
But the marines don't need to wait in base. They can move out and attack. They only need to go in the direction where the gorge is probably coming from. Again: You can't send all your troops one way and expect to not get kicked in the ass from the other side. At least scan those area when you make such a big push so you can react in time to such threats.
To stop 2-3 Gorges, you need 1-2 Marines? Sounds like a decent trade off. Those Gorges are focusing on one location, so you can afford to send less Marines to play guard duty. I'm not seeing the issue here. It should take 1-2 Marines to stop 2-3 Gorges.
Also, you say you had the upper hand. How did your team allow the Aliens to keep Cafe or Gen (separated by Locker Room) long enough to "constantly" harass Terminal? All you have to do is drop the Aliens to one Hive and kill the Gorges; no more Bile Bomb.
You can't expect 1 or 2 marines to just sit in base all game waiting for that moment that 2 gorges run into your base with adrenaline jumping about bile bombing your entire base. It just doesn't happen and isn't fun.
This was on a pub server with average/newbie players that don't look at their maps often enough. From a commander perspective that's trying to help an average/newbie team actually win a game as marine it's extremely overpowered and frustrating.
It's also irritating how you have to spread your base structures all over the bloody place aswel just so they don't annihilate absolutely everything within one bile area.
If you think it's fine the way it is at the moment, you're wrong.
I see your point well enough Strofix, but your method of handling the gorge in your base is wrong from the getgo. You never asked yourself 'should I just get out of the chair and use this gun I have right here in my hands to put bullets into his face until he dies'. That is the question you should have asked yourself first.
If your Team is heavily invested in an exo push on the Aliens second hive, then I'd say you've got a pretty good shot of it being just a gorge with no skulk guardian. Even two Gorges I'd put even money on a Marine with even a simple shotgun. If you stay in the chair, and the power goes down, are you really any better off in your unpowered metal coffin?
You're not 'trapped' in your box, and I'm pretty sure your Exo push will be fine without your guiding hand for twenty seconds. If more than two members of their team are in your base, beacon like hell because that means they don't have enough defenders to pose a serious threat to your Exo's. If you still lost your Exo's, well you got out played. It happens to us all.
This isn't a hard science or anything, but saying Bile needs to be nerfed because you can't be bothered to get out of the chair is absurd. I'm not saying that to you personally Strofix, since I haven't seen you suggest as much yet. There are those that seem to be saying that, and a lot of the examples being bandied about aren't examples of ninja gorges they're examples of a strike force that faked out some Exo's into exposing themselves too much. You see a mistake, or force a mistake, and you use it.
Exploiting that opening is literally what NS2 is all about.
I do, however, agree with you that it's just too much to expect all that from a Marines commander. They are different, but Marines are undeniably the harder team to play both as a foot soldier and as the commander. It's the most glaring in the command though. I hate commanding Marines, because you will be blamed for everything. On Aliens, no one seems to care as long as they get their upgrades and you put out drifters.
Well the problem of the commander jumping out when he sees 2 dots in base is that the 2nd dot might be a fade or Onos. I believe you can't tell what the enemy is until an actual marine has LOS to one. (Minor nitpick but having an animation for the alien commander getting out would be nice as well). Although I suppose you could use the res and scan.
The crux of all of our arguments is essentially we find the difficult and leeway to counter bilebomb-base-killing strategies either too hard or just fine. I don't think its fine but you and Strofix do. I personally think anything that gives the commander some additional leeway can only be better for the game. Currently, the commander has to be an excellent micro-manager, have excellent communication, great mouse control for medipack drops / item selection, great aim when you have to get out and kill rogue skulks (or else you're losing valuable marine comm time) and insane game awareness or else your team loses. That's a lot of job requirements for having fun.
It doesn't help that, unlike in SC2 where you're matched with someone similar, odds are you NEED a high base APM right from the start to even function. Combining this with the continuous fear of bilebomb attacks that can end games quickly and you have a very stressful position compared to the alien comm.
They should fix the damned bugged Power Node alert system. That'd be a start.
If you dont think that bile bomb gorges win more games than probably every single other tactic (other than skill imbalance) than you are most likely wrong. The only tactic that probably comes close is the random wait 30 seconds and baserush. Bilebomb does too much damage per attack (not necessarily to much DPS). Adrenaline increases the amount of bile bombs you can fire too much, and also a carapace gorge that is jumping is harder to kill than it should be (wierd animation?). Bilebomb should be effective as a structure killer but NOT as a singlehanded game ender. The difficulty of executing a bilebomb rush in no way compares to the difficulty of defending against one, especially one that is even half ass coordinated.
The gorge is probably the single most overpowered unit currently, and arguably the one people realize the least.
This, so much this, I was going to write up a huge rant condemning everything but this is complete truth, it's absolutely fucking retarded that marines can play a near perfect round for 19 minutes of a game and have 2 shitters gorge just outside of a base and bile the power down in 10 seconds, bile every important structure down in less than 15 seconds, if gorges are to be left as they are either exos, arcs or both need to be able to phase. They need to make the CC the primary power source in tech nodes, they need to nerf bile range or make it wind up, nerf the AOE radius, increase gorge cost fuck just about anything at this point to stop this horseshit.
1. fast beacon (0.5 second instead 2-3 seconds until beacon):
select main base observatory and press CTRL + 1 (= 1 key for quick select the observatory)
beacon by: 1-key + S-key
2. nano-shield on powernode: (if you have 2 cc up, 1 second instead 3-4 seconds)
E + D + click on powernode
To stop 2-3 Gorges, you need 1-2 Marines? Sounds like a decent trade off. Those Gorges are focusing on one location, so you can afford to send less Marines to play guard duty. I'm not seeing the issue here. It should take 1-2 Marines to stop 2-3 Gorges.
Except it doesn't. the gorges will ignore the marines and bile bomb the power. marines lose PG, lose upgrades, etc. Even if the power isn't taken down it forces a beacon stopping whatever momentum the marines had else where. You seem to forget the amazing range bile bomb has... if those marines try to hunt down the gorge... well now base is open again isn't it?
Sure its good team play but its reward is so high compared to the risk - not to mention is very likely to succeed.
If 1-2 marines are left at base that means 1-2 less marines helping weld exos, building havesters (or anything), and 1-2 less weapons at the front.
Marines have these things called 'Phase Gates' that allow them to be in as many places simultaneously as they have gates.
Ergo, Gorges starts bile bombing a base and some members of your team phase through into your base thus stopping the Gorges. This is because Gorges suck at killing anything other than structures, while Marines are very good at killing fat slow aliens with few offensive options. If your Marines are slow at stopping massive Alien attacks, then why do you feel that team deserves to win? Because it's 'too easy' to Bile Bomb from the rear? Then why don't you fortify your rear? Or even watch that area? I can't help it if a ton of Marines commanders don't pay attention.
If Bile Bomb kills stuff 'too fast' for you to react, it's because the Aliens made a concentrated attempt to do so. It's like saying two flamethrowers kill hives 'too fast' and Aliens 'can't react in time'. Just because Marines don't often use a very effective strategy doesn't mean it's bad, it means the Marines are bad. The game must end, and sometimes you're going to lose. I'm sorry. The flamethrower anology isn't perfect of course, but Marines scale better than Aliens. End-game there's no reason you shouldn't have several flamethrower equipped jet packers. (Unless of course you're losing.)
People that say Bile Bomb is effective are right. People that say Bile Bomb is an Omega game ender are playing on the wrong servers. Maybe this is a bigger problem in 12v12 or something, where you could have four Gorges at once without sacrificing any of your offensive capabilities on players. In those servers, I'd say grenade spam that annihilates everything minus whips is pretty nasty too. Or a mass charge of flamethrowers, that do low damage but multiplies with number of flamers?
Quite frankly, if the match lasts long enough there's no good reason for the Marines to lose beyond them being drastically outplayed. The Aliens are basically on a win timer unless they keep the Marines on their back foot the whole match.
TL;DR: If you let three or four players of either team run amok in your base for any longer than 15 to 20 seconds, you have failed as commander. Welcome to Marines, the hard-mode team.
Comments
While the flamethrower costs far more than a gorge, it can annihilate a hive very quickly with the ammo you carry around with you. It also doesn't need to 'depower' anything, because it kills the only structure that matters in the vicinity. It's the power node and the command chair. (A heavy investment in crags and whips deter this, of course, as would an investment in a shotgun/grenade launcher for the commander on the Marines team.)
Oh, and it can be stacked with other upgrades like a jetpack. Not that you'd need the jetpack in the scenario where there are no defenders to stop you. (And of course it raises the cost of a flamethrower by ten, making it more on par with a Lerk than a gorge in cost. Of course, the jetpack itself is the same cost as a gorge. Suicide jetpack Marines on a hive, anyone? Anyone?)
Actually, with that in mind, what about flamethrower troops that simply run about flaming cysts without resistance? I mean, in the 'Gorge Bile Bomb' scenario every one of you has put forward there is minimal or zero resistance at the main base that's being attacked. A single gorge isn't going to drop an entire Marines base 'in seconds', and if it's a group of Gorges it's an all out assault at an undefended location. It's an all-or-nothing move by the Aliens, and is very likely to cost the Aliens a hive while costing the Marines a base. It's just poor strategy all around for both teams, although the Aliens come out on top of the trade due to their lack of structure investment.
If it's as ubiquitous of a problem as people make it out to be, why don't the Marines plan around that being something that will happen rather than something that won't happen? I mean, come on, the Marines commander puts stuff in places that make Bile Bomb super easy even for a new player. There is no incentive to cluster buildings on the Marines team, yet without fail everything is within Bile range of each other even in rooms with plenty of room. Why?!
The difference is no one is killing hives with flamethrowers once every 3 games by themselves. I dunno, maybe it's because all the marines are idiots and haven't realized just how quickly and easy it is to kill a hive with a flamethrower...
A jetpack/flamer is 35 res. You can't exactly suicide on a base with that amount of tech and res. Also, the marin base does drop "in seconds". 17 seconds. 18-21 seconds if a marine is able to kill the gorge but takes "seconds" too long to buy a welder and run to the power node. Also, in that scenario, there has to be a minimum of 2-3 marines in the depowered base to get it back online or else marines will most likely lose the base to reinforcing alien waves.
For your argument about clustering: structures have to be placed in certain areas or its even easier to bilebomb from far out of range in the hallways leading to marine base (also allowing gorges to run away easier). Hell, it's the reason why the kiosk in Docking had to be moved to prevent hallway bilebombs (or at least partially remove its efficiency).
More often than not if it's a group of gorges (or a gorge and a fade, or the beloved Onos and 1-2 gorge attack), that isn't an all or nothing attack. The gorges are a low investment lifeform and the Onos can retreat if a beacon is called. Now ARCs are an all or nothing investment because if the attack fails hard, its harder for them to run away and they're expensive.
Base trading you mentioned is... situational. Sometimes its better for marines (3 marine bases vs 2 alien hives). However, in an even fight, I agree, Marines normally lose more res.
And as you said, marines ARE planning around it. You don't think armories-as-walls or Factory-blocking-onos tactics were made in a vacuum. Normally, I take it upon myself to stay at base and play security guard while everyone else moves out. Hopefully, another marine will be near enough that if a 2 gorge or a gorge + fade/onos moves in, I can buy the comm enough time to beacon back. Maybe those Exos can kill a res-bought lifeform before they die on the field.
I gotta say though, it's fun sitting and watching the base sometimes. I feel like a gorge, watching the obs whir too a fro... looking at the map for blinking structures... jumping between bases... Its oddly calming. Sometimes I wonder what my alien-security-guard counterpart is doing... Maybe he's a gorge patrolling the hives and watching the hydras twitch and grow.
I still think the power node/Bile bomb relation could be handled better and should be looked at.
if your not going to take my entire post seriously then dont pick out one part of it and respond to that.
now for the answer to your response
i didn't realize destroying eggs did simultaneous damage to the aliens entire base. i must be confused. does destroying eggs damage nearby units as well?
the entire alien base must die pretty quick then right?
now for your most likely response
"clearly grenade launchers dude splash damage"
oh really? grenade launchers due damage over time to all structures it hits? plus it also costs two seperate research technolgies at 40 res each to research + 25 player res to get? gorge unit (do you know how cheap the gorge cost even with bile bomb researched which applies to all gorges?) + with adrenaline it hits destroys structures a lot faster then a gl would (when really all it needs to destroy is the power but luckily the gorge can hit everything.
this is all from a cheap support unit by the way i want to make sure this is clear .compare an onos to a gorge and see the kind of damage each could due to a base its easily on par if not more.
i didn't realize aliens didn't have the ability to drop additional eggs from nearby shifts the base must die to quick for aliens to do anything (aliens altered version of beacon if you will)
"well dude that's what beacon is for"
do you know how much health the obs has? ive had two gorges bile bomb it and when i notice within a few seconds and hit beacon, what do you know the observatory dies before beacon finishes.
i dont know how many hours you've put into ns2, but i've put in a lot so i dont take something like gorge bile bomb being fine lightly. again. go do the test then see what im talking about.
now just cuz i have time i will respond to your "nano a building, you know the nano costs res and really adds maybe 5 more seconds of being bile bombed (if that). so assume this happens every minute or of the game, a nano + beacon thats 15 res i believe + it taking away every player on the map away from their position. and what happens then? nano has a cooldown. the gorge runs out and can bile something else and u cant nano it. even with unlimited nano, considering how expensive it is there is a reason most commanders dont use it it's extremely risky and high cost long term so you'd only do it if you have no other choice and might as well do it.
you really think people haven't thought of that this entire time? games now fear gorges with bile bomb as if they were onos. and as commander i fear them more then onos they can easily obliterate it from far away and run away when marines phase through, onos has to be up close and personal and is an easy target.the fades at least and lerks and skulks wont obliterate an entire base quickly since their limited to single structures AND at close range, unlike the great bile bomb from a less then 20 res gorge.
im not sure if you will respond this way but ive seen some people already so please do not use the response " just kill the gorge " i will lose brain cells. I can apply that logic to anything it's the same logic people used in left 4 dead 2 when people complained about the molotov slowing down the tank. they respond " well dont get lit on fire then". amazing logic! hey wanna know how not to die as an onos? dont go onos.,
"hey lerk keeps harassing base from far away off the map "
"dude its called defend and kill it "
gorge is bile bombing from 50 feet away damaging everything and bellyslides away to safety we cant catch up even with sprint or jetpack.
"its fat and easy to hit you should've killed it before it ran off"
by time we did it had destroyed bunch of structures and another gorge shows up.
"go attack their hive then why are you turtling in base."
none of that.
It's the same if you reverse the roles. Play with competent Marines.
To stop 2-3 Gorges, you need 1-2 Marines? Sounds like a decent trade off. Those Gorges are focusing on one location, so you can afford to send less Marines to play guard duty. I'm not seeing the issue here. It should take 1-2 Marines to stop 2-3 Gorges.
Also, you say you had the upper hand. How did your team allow the Aliens to keep Cafe or Gen (separated by Locker Room) long enough to "constantly" harass Terminal? All you have to do is drop the Aliens to one Hive and kill the Gorges; no more Bile Bomb.
In practice it's not the same, that much is clear. A hive being ninjaed down is incredibly rare compared to main base losing power. If the bar for "competent" is higher for marines than it is for aliens then we have a problem.
I'd actually like that if you could charge it up to go even further/flatter than it can currently.
also: allow marines to pop them... turrets should be like 50% accurate at it... it really wont do a whole lot, but allow a minor defense against bb
At the end of the day, another warning type by the AI is going to be annoying as hell. Two skulks gang banging the power node is going to work even better than two Gorges going bile happy, since the only thing that matters in that base is killing the power. Sure gorges destroy more stuff than just the node, but you don't need to kill that stuff. It is collateral damage. Arguably you could say it's a good idea to kill the Observatory first, but if you have two skulks you've got a damn good shot of killing the power before that beacon finishes. Especially if it's a commander that didn't notice two gorges with bile bomb.
As I said earlier, this post should be about power nodes not Bile Bomb. I'm glad to see I'm not the only person that see's that in this thread. That being said, with Marines getting nano armor I really do fail to see the problem with power nodes beyond the fact they are useless micro. Much like the aliens cyst system, it's a B.S. mini-game to distract you from the big picture. The problem is that if you ignore the mini-game you still lose.
The thing that annoys me is the priority. To me, NS2 is all about handling priorities.
You look at what is going down. You consider your options. You weigh the pros and cons. And you make a choice based on a number of educated assumptions, and you hope that they turn out to be correct.
Single Onos in your base? Well if I nano the power node he should be slowed down enough, and I have these exos in trouble right now and they need the light support so I will delay the distress by a few seconds.
Skulk rush on spawn? Well my marines are moving out for nodes at the moment, maybe if just these two guys come back they can do enough damage to be able to respawn and finish off the rest.
Gorge in our base? HOLY SHIT I CANNOT HIT THAT DISTRESS BUTTON FAST ENOUGH I do not care what is going on anywhere else on the map it simply does not matter because if I waste even 1 second I may lose every single structure we have.
Its just too damn much.
If your Team is heavily invested in an exo push on the Aliens second hive, then I'd say you've got a pretty good shot of it being just a gorge with no skulk guardian. Even two Gorges I'd put even money on a Marine with even a simple shotgun. If you stay in the chair, and the power goes down, are you really any better off in your unpowered metal coffin?
You're not 'trapped' in your box, and I'm pretty sure your Exo push will be fine without your guiding hand for twenty seconds. If more than two members of their team are in your base, beacon like hell because that means they don't have enough defenders to pose a serious threat to your Exo's. If you still lost your Exo's, well you got out played. It happens to us all.
This isn't a hard science or anything, but saying Bile needs to be nerfed because you can't be bothered to get out of the chair is absurd. I'm not saying that to you personally Strofix, since I haven't seen you suggest as much yet. There are those that seem to be saying that, and a lot of the examples being bandied about aren't examples of ninja gorges they're examples of a strike force that faked out some Exo's into exposing themselves too much. You see a mistake, or force a mistake, and you use it.
Exploiting that opening is literally what NS2 is all about.
I do, however, agree with you that it's just too much to expect all that from a Marines commander. They are different, but Marines are undeniably the harder team to play both as a foot soldier and as the commander. It's the most glaring in the command though. I hate commanding Marines, because you will be blamed for everything. On Aliens, no one seems to care as long as they get their upgrades and you put out drifters.
I know, a skulk can probably sneak through the front line in most cases. But this takes time. And the occasions where the base falls to a ninja gorge are mostly because the com didn't care, that one entrance to its base is completely undefended and without an early warning option like an obs.
Like SpaceJew wrote, 1 or 2 skulks can absolutely do the same. They even can engage defending marines. This is a problem of power nodes. Not of bile bomb. If you nerf bile bomb you just hurt the poor gorge and the only effective weapon he has. But your undefended bases will go down to skulks now.
The real problem are the smart gorges that know they can't take the power node, so instead they focus fire things like observatories, armories, IPs, arms labs. The things that can realistically be destroyed. Even if you don't destroy them, a half competent gorge will get 80% of all structures in a marine base down to around 50% health. Then what? There are a few options.
A single marine dedicates the next 1-2 minutes welding everything up
2-3 marines dedicate the next 30 seconds to doing nothing but welding structures in marine spawn
The marine commander spend 20-30 resources getting enough macs to repair everything
The comm does nothing and the next time the gorge hits the base, everything goes
When dealing with structures other than the comm chair and power node, even the logout delay of 2-3 seconds is enough to cause complete devastation.
The gorge is probably the single most overpowered unit currently, and arguably the one people realize the least.
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/128314/bilebomb-suggestion-also-buffs-centries
One MAC will actually work. It might take longer, but the Gorge is dead now right? 30 or 45 seconds is a pretty long time, and that former Gorge is now in his hive that has Marines in it right?
Just sayin'. There was that one time a Gorge used his bile bomb and killed three guys in one shot. Then, the shot ricocheted into the command chair which blew up into a pillar of nuclear flame, killing all life on the map except the mighty Gorge.
But then I woke up.
(Wait, we were playing the nonsense game right?)
I'll test this out as I don't know the exact numbers, but I would estimate that a single MAC would take about a minute to repair a command chair from 50% to 100%. An entire base would take like 5 minutes. That is unless the MACs welding ability is not proportional to its relative ability to build.
As for turtling... Have it so that Sentries within the blast radius of Xenocide are knocked over and destroyed. Voila, game-prolonging Sentries nullified.
Yes, a good coordinated bile rush with a gorge and 1 or 2 aliens who cover him from marines is devastating. But this is good team play from the aliens and should be rewarded. I have no problem with this case. Because this is a valid attack with 3 players on a base. Marines can counter it by simply sending 3 or 4 marines and kill those gorge and its defenders. But the marines don't need to wait in base. They can move out and attack. They only need to go in the direction where the gorge is probably coming from. Again: You can't send all your troops one way and expect to not get kicked in the ass from the other side. At least scan those area when you make such a big push so you can react in time to such threats.
This was on a pub server with average/newbie players that don't look at their maps often enough. From a commander perspective that's trying to help an average/newbie team actually win a game as marine it's extremely overpowered and frustrating.
It's also irritating how you have to spread your base structures all over the bloody place aswel just so they don't annihilate absolutely everything within one bile area.
If you think it's fine the way it is at the moment, you're wrong.
Well the problem of the commander jumping out when he sees 2 dots in base is that the 2nd dot might be a fade or Onos. I believe you can't tell what the enemy is until an actual marine has LOS to one. (Minor nitpick but having an animation for the alien commander getting out would be nice as well). Although I suppose you could use the res and scan.
The crux of all of our arguments is essentially we find the difficult and leeway to counter bilebomb-base-killing strategies either too hard or just fine. I don't think its fine but you and Strofix do. I personally think anything that gives the commander some additional leeway can only be better for the game. Currently, the commander has to be an excellent micro-manager, have excellent communication, great mouse control for medipack drops / item selection, great aim when you have to get out and kill rogue skulks (or else you're losing valuable marine comm time) and insane game awareness or else your team loses. That's a lot of job requirements for having fun.
It doesn't help that, unlike in SC2 where you're matched with someone similar, odds are you NEED a high base APM right from the start to even function. Combining this with the continuous fear of bilebomb attacks that can end games quickly and you have a very stressful position compared to the alien comm.
They should fix the damned bugged Power Node alert system. That'd be a start.
This, so much this, I was going to write up a huge rant condemning everything but this is complete truth, it's absolutely fucking retarded that marines can play a near perfect round for 19 minutes of a game and have 2 shitters gorge just outside of a base and bile the power down in 10 seconds, bile every important structure down in less than 15 seconds, if gorges are to be left as they are either exos, arcs or both need to be able to phase. They need to make the CC the primary power source in tech nodes, they need to nerf bile range or make it wind up, nerf the AOE radius, increase gorge cost fuck just about anything at this point to stop this horseshit.
1. fast beacon (0.5 second instead 2-3 seconds until beacon):
select main base observatory and press CTRL + 1 (= 1 key for quick select the observatory)
beacon by: 1-key + S-key
2. nano-shield on powernode: (if you have 2 cc up, 1 second instead 3-4 seconds)
E + D + click on powernode
Except it doesn't. the gorges will ignore the marines and bile bomb the power. marines lose PG, lose upgrades, etc. Even if the power isn't taken down it forces a beacon stopping whatever momentum the marines had else where. You seem to forget the amazing range bile bomb has... if those marines try to hunt down the gorge... well now base is open again isn't it?
Sure its good team play but its reward is so high compared to the risk - not to mention is very likely to succeed.
If 1-2 marines are left at base that means 1-2 less marines helping weld exos, building havesters (or anything), and 1-2 less weapons at the front.
Ergo, Gorges starts bile bombing a base and some members of your team phase through into your base thus stopping the Gorges. This is because Gorges suck at killing anything other than structures, while Marines are very good at killing fat slow aliens with few offensive options. If your Marines are slow at stopping massive Alien attacks, then why do you feel that team deserves to win? Because it's 'too easy' to Bile Bomb from the rear? Then why don't you fortify your rear? Or even watch that area? I can't help it if a ton of Marines commanders don't pay attention.
If Bile Bomb kills stuff 'too fast' for you to react, it's because the Aliens made a concentrated attempt to do so. It's like saying two flamethrowers kill hives 'too fast' and Aliens 'can't react in time'. Just because Marines don't often use a very effective strategy doesn't mean it's bad, it means the Marines are bad. The game must end, and sometimes you're going to lose. I'm sorry. The flamethrower anology isn't perfect of course, but Marines scale better than Aliens. End-game there's no reason you shouldn't have several flamethrower equipped jet packers. (Unless of course you're losing.)
People that say Bile Bomb is effective are right. People that say Bile Bomb is an Omega game ender are playing on the wrong servers. Maybe this is a bigger problem in 12v12 or something, where you could have four Gorges at once without sacrificing any of your offensive capabilities on players. In those servers, I'd say grenade spam that annihilates everything minus whips is pretty nasty too. Or a mass charge of flamethrowers, that do low damage but multiplies with number of flamers?
Quite frankly, if the match lasts long enough there's no good reason for the Marines to lose beyond them being drastically outplayed. The Aliens are basically on a win timer unless they keep the Marines on their back foot the whole match.
TL;DR: If you let three or four players of either team run amok in your base for any longer than 15 to 20 seconds, you have failed as commander. Welcome to Marines, the hard-mode team.